


be here until i'm nothing

by upottery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/upottery/pseuds/upottery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tomorrow is the first day of the seventh month of the eighth year since he lost his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be here until i'm nothing

**Author's Note:**

> i just have a lot of stilinski family emotions and here is maybe %.03 of it. i'm warning you of the sadness ahead of time okay!!! title belongs to radical face.

Sometimes the winter comes early, days and weeks where the temperature drops and socks need to be worn under the covers at night. It came five months early for the first time when he was eleven. The leaves still held green, but all the warmth was lost on his skin, and he would see the sun through a cloudless sky, the brightness of it betraying the desolation he felt. When he closed his eyes, all the color drained from his thoughts, his mother’s warm brown eyes turned a flat black. Every year since, July has been the coldest month, when food always tastes burnt and he stays awake for days because his mind is covered in blackened charcoal dust. 

Tomorrow is the first day of the seventh month of the eighth year since he lost his mother, and the wound still breathes because the scab never heals over it by the time the cold returns to his bones.

If Stiles can be glad for one reason it would be because school’s out and no one can pity him. That’s the worst part, he thinks. The way people sadly smile and pat his shoulder, as if he cannot define himself outside of his parentage. There is always a label: human, Sheriff’s son, benchwarmer. Why can’t he just be Stiles that Gets Sad Sometimes? Or Stiles for short?

Whatever people call him, it won’t help him get to sleep tonight.

-

For a moment he feels the pricks of the rosebush in his backyard, his little hands in too-big gloves and thumbs wiping the childish tears from his cheeks. He can see his mother as she bends to take the gloves off and to kiss every fingertip, saying softly between pecks that _There is no beauty without a little pain_.

He sits up in his bed with a breathless laugh and the same child’s tears in his eyes, wondering if perhaps he’s been granted a reprieve, and if his mom knew how right she was. 

His hopes are dashed when it starts in his ribs. The familiar ache, the hollowed-out cavity is his chest, like his lungs can’t stop expanding because there is nothing there to stop them. It’s like the opposite of drowning; breathing in too much dust and life causing him to suffocate and wince anyway, because he is living and his mother is just not. 

It’s always the worst on the first day, and Stiles just keeps blinking through it. He can’t change anything and he finished saying all the apologies he thought he could years ago. He is nineteen and he should be better than this. This plague of guilt and shame should have been cast away, he should be able to recall a macaroni and cheese recipe and smile at the memory. But he just can’t, not this month. His dad had said that there was no shame in that fact.

He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes, rubbing away the bleariness, when he hears the window creak behind him. And Stiles knows it’s Derek, he smells the leather and redwood bark on him. And he also knows that every year since he met Derek there had been no sneaking in through the window during this month.

Stiles lifts his hands from his face, pupils probably wide and nose reddened. Derek looks at him with trepidation and a misguided sort of fondness, but there is no pity underneath, as he had feared. “Well, can’t say I expected to see you here.” Stiles coughs, trying to mask another sob that threatens to bubble up.

“I wanted to know why you made excuses to not see anyone.” Derek sighs. “I saw your car.” He pauses, “I guess you’re not on vacation.”

“I guess not.” Stiles echoes. 

Stiles is so _cold_.

Derek sits on the edge of his bed and reaches his hand halfway across the blanket before letting it drop. “Stiles, I-“

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.” Stiles wrenches his eyes shut. “You of all people should realize the transience of ‘I’m sorry’.”

“I wasn’t going to.” 

Stiles can feel Derek’s thumbs wiping the tears from his face; he can feel Derek’s breath as he moves closer; he doesn’t have time to open his eyes before Derek barely brushes his lips against Stiles’ own.

Stiles buries his face in where Derek’s neck meets his shoulder and lets the sobs come out, deep and suffocating breaths of life and each one is another closer to death. He’s mumbling things, he can hear himself, things about his mom and her eyes and her voice and her hair.

And Derek holds him and says “I know, Stiles, I know.”


End file.
